Circulation study: Digital up, print down

Seriously. That sounds less like the ad department couldn't sell, and more like they didn't even try at all.

 

Matt's story is the same experience I had with every special section going back to the 1980s. The ad people say at the start that they will sell enough ads for a huge section and toss out some number that is at least 20 pages. So we get to work (on top of our regular duties) putting together enough content to fill those pages. Not another word is heard from the ad bozos until the day we have to start putting the section together. Then we find out it is four pages or less. And NOTHING ever happened to any of the ad people that we ever heard about.

 

Yup, I get Lowe's and Home Depot circulars via US Mail and Sunday coupon inserts appear to be waning. The local supermarket here with a large senior citizen clientele pushes digital coupons in their print weekly circular -- also delivered by snail mail. Cut and redeem coupons are on the way out, more bad news for print editions.

 

Similar story from the '80s. We had 12 high schools, 2 JCs, 2 major colleges, 2 pro teams. We got late approval to proceed, but it was too late to do much ad work. We did a "Football" tab that was pretty good. The ad people came over and raved about it. "We'll really be able to sell this next year."

Next year, it was well-planned ahead of time. They couldn't/didn't sell it. When we got the final page count, there simply wasn't room for everything. So we adjusted and produced a "Prep Football" tab. Ad people were enraged. "What about the Rams and Trojans?" they whined. "We'll never be able to sell this next year."

Bottom line, they couldn't/didn't sell it regardless.

 

This is the same story everywhere. One year I gave the ad reps a copy of 3 or 4 local high school's football programs that were as thick as coffee table books. (Maybe go after some of their full page ad buys.) They finally admitted they were only going after a) current accounts or b) big money (full page) accounts. It was a "waste of time" for them to sell a bunch of 1x2s or 2x4s and have to design all of them.
Finally, I convinced them to sell the team schedule boxes (like 40 of them) to 1 account and found another account to buy a cover strip as the title sponsor for 2 preseason tabs and 13 weekly inserts.
Last I heard the ad rep got like a $250 bonus for the title sponsor. Even though I came up with the plan and initiated the conversation I didn't get anything.

 

This is exactly how it's gone down in my experiences, to the letter.
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, so on.
Unprofessional horseshit that makes us all look like clowns.

 

One time I got involved like that. UCLA is in our circulation area and I was the beat guy. In 1983-84, ahead of the Olympics, UCLA played host to 6 NCAA events with Olympic ties. MBKB was a regional, the other five were championships, like WBKB, M&W tennis, M volleyball, W gymnastics.

As these start, there was a full-page ad from UCLA in the L.A. Times. I went to the SID, who I was good friends with, and told him: Hey, I've been covering all of these sports here for years and I'll be covering all of these events. How about sending some ads our way? Well, he did. That was great. I didn't get anything out of it, but I guess it helped the paper and some ad person.

 

Amid the job switch and moving of the past two months, this excellent piece fell through the cracks. So here's Mark Jacob, former Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times editor, discussing how 24/7 digital and Sunday print might be the new way to go for dailies:

Is 24/7 Digital and Sunday-Only Print the Future for Local News?

 

They're not doing it now, but they might as well be. Half the time the daily report isn't worth spending $3 or $5. The only way I'd buy a paper now is if it was the weekend/Sunday edition.

 

I think you'll see Wednesday-Sunday print editions for a lot of smaller and mid-sized dailies for a while. Those are the two editions with any ROP advertising anymore, plus the Wednesday grocery store inserts. Oldsters (raises hand) like to keep their grocery store inserts.

 

Our ad department couldn't sell ass on a troopship.

 

Let's say newspapers go to two days a week of print. This means that the print edition will become even less timely and basically feature oriented. We are already seeing papers consolidate into centralized printing plants. I think that going to a couple days of print a week will accelerate this trend because timeliness will become less important.

As an example let's say that five papers print out of the same plant. What is cheaper? To consolidate the five papers into one regional paper or maintain separate papers and websites? I think cheaper wins and we see a lot of consolidations.